


Hope Within Horror

by LORBEERPRINZ



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn
Genre: Dead People, Gen, Pre-Canon, Tellius Week 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:20:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26157175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LORBEERPRINZ/pseuds/LORBEERPRINZ
Summary: (written for Tellius Week 2020 Day 6: Hope)After a glimpse of good fortune, a nameless little boy finds himself deep within the aftermath of a bloodbath. But despite being surrounded by death, he cannot give up lookin for the one person who ever showed him kindness.
Kudos: 5





	Hope Within Horror

It was a nice day, actually, as the sun shone proudly from the skies, wrapping the earth and all creatures in its warm rays and at first the young boy had thought the weather reflected his mood, that finally, after all this time of pain and fear, something nice was actually happening to him. This small glimpse of luck the day prior had given him more hope than he would have ever expected.  
But that was only natural, as that other child had shown him way more kindness than anyone ever before. Maybe, the boy had thought that moment, someone cared about his existence after all.

And so the child had waited for his new friend to appear today as well, as he had promised to do so. But until this point he hadn’t shown up. The longer the morning had gone on without a glimpse of the boy who had so generously shared his food without hesitation, the more his small heart had sunk.  
Maybe he was just like everyone else after all. Maybe he had realized he wasn’t supposed to talk to him. Empty promises were nothing new.  
And yet, something inside the boy’s mind told him that couldn’t be the case. This was the first person to show genuine worry about him when he had discovered his weak, starved body, the first person to give him a genuine smile when he’d seen him munch on the food he had so naturally shared. He just couldn’t be like all the others. Something was wrong.

With shaking legs the boy made his way closer to the village, always on the lookout for other people, who would undoubtedly not want him close to their homes. It had always been this way, after all.  
But something was very different today, and the closer he made it to the outskirts of the small village, the more evidence was beginning to form. It was unusually quiet, for once, nobody seemed to travel along the road leading up to the first settlements that marked this place, no voices of busy townsfolk. 

And then there was this… smell.  
It had only been very faint at first, but it became harder and harder to ignore with every step the boy took towards the village. He wasn’t sure whether he had smelled it before in his life, but was immediately taken aback by how it crept into his nose, seemed to crawl through his entire body in an attempt to perhaps knock him out on the spot. Had his stomach not been as empty as it was, he might have thrown up right then and there.   
It made it hard to go on at first, but after a few minutes the boy managed to get at least a little used to the stench that surrounded the area. And yet, he couldn’t shake off the feeling that something about it was just  _ wrong _ .

Just a minute later, the boy encountered the source of this feeling, the stench, the nausea.

Before him an ocean of bodies revealed itself, all of them lifeless and grey, the only color seemingly left in this view being the red blood that collected in small pools everywhere. He understood instantly what was going on.  
Not a single soul appeared to be alive anymore, and as the boy ventured into this field of catastrophe with shaking knees, he tried his best to not inhale too deeply as the sharp reek of death seemed to cut him apart from the inside. No matter how firmly he clasped his hands before his nose, it just would not help.  
It was impossible for him to tell what had happened here, but the sight of mutilated bodies drenched in blood, some missing limbs, others eternally frozen in an expression of horror, made it easily clear that whatever it had been, it was severe. Death was everywhere. He stopped, barely noticed the small red puddle he had stepped into with bare feet. No matter where he looked, all he saw was dead bodies.   
His instincts were telling him, screamed at him inside his head to get out of this place as quickly as possible, that the source for all of this might still be lurking somewhere, but he couldn’t. The longer he looked around these bodies, the more he could feel another thought crawl to the surface. If nobody was left alive anywhere, did that mean his new friend shared the same fate? Was he somewhere among this sea of death?

Suddenly his attitude changed. Seeing all these dead people had not done much other than tell him there might be danger around  – sure, the stench was awful, but he had begun to remember where he knew it from. It was the same the small hut had started to stink of a little while after the old sage had closed his eyes for the very last time, and back then he had not really connected the two things. The only thing he really knew about death was that it was apparently the only thing that was good enough for him.  
But now, it was different. The thought that this other boy might be among the heaps of the dead was something he could not shake off anymore. If he was dead too, the young child would have immediately lost the only comrade he felt he had finally gained.

He couldn’t be dead. He just  _ couldn’t _ .  
He was the only one who had ever cared.

The boy felt his hands beginning to shake, stronger than even his weak and exhausted legs had. It wasn’t the stench anymore that made him sick and uneasy, the mere thought that this other boy was somewhere around here, killed by whatever had come over the village, without a chance of the two of them ever able to meet again, was just too much.  
His knees were about to give in for a second, but he caught himself, forcing himself to look around against his better judgement. He found adults and children alike in this gruesome scenario, almost tripped over a severed limb once. But none of these sights was as frightening as the thought of his new friend being somewhere among the dead. He didn’t even know why he kept looking around.

After a few minutes, turning his head to look over the bodies next to him, he caught sight of something blue. He tumbled backwards, fell, couldn’t suppress a shriek. This couldn’t be true, it had to be a trick of his tired, anxious mind.  
Blue hair like he had seen the day before.  
Blue hair like that boy’s.  
He was frozen, his head empty save for one thought:  _ it was him _ .

The boy was on the verge of screaming, but nothing would come out, a knot in his throat forming so tightly that he couldn’t even breathe. His whole body was shaking.  
And yet, by some instinct he couldn’t even explain, his body crawled forward again to dig through the dead bodies around where he had glimpsed the strands of blue. Something inside of him told him that he had to at least see the other boy’s face again one last time, that he couldn’t just run away like this and leave him to this untimely, undignified end. Even the old sage had died in a more noble manner.  
Before pulling the last body away, a woman who seemed to have protected the child and was possibly his mother holding him tightly against her chest, the boy hesitated, trying as best as he could to stop himself from hyperventilating. As he clenched his fingers around the woman’s clothes in an attempt to pull, he felt tears rising up. He wasn’t ready for the truth, he knew it, but there was no turning back at this point.  
He just wanted to see him one last time.

Pulling the woman away turned out harder than he had expected, as he had to yank away not only her own weight but also that of the child in her arms, and when he finally managed to do so, the woman would have almost fallen onto him had he not managed to step away just in time. A moment, later, however, he was frozen again.  
The blue hair in front of him was long.  
Not only that, now that sunlight was falling onto it, the shade of blue was completely different, he was sure of it, had memorized everything about this helpful boy already.  
This very obviously wasn’t him. Instead, he saw a young girl, probably younger than himself, who looked so peaceful and untouched it seemed like she was simply sleeping. But he knew she wasn’t, could see the wound on her head and while it was impossible to tell what had caused it, he was sure this was what had killed her.  
So apparently, even a mother’s protection wasn’t infallible. 

The boy kept staring at the sight of the deceased mother and child in front of him, his mind calming down with every second that passed. He had no sympathy for these people, would only later in life learn that one was supposed to be sad and take pity when someone innocent had died. At that moment, however, relief slowly began to rise inside of him.

There was another chance that his friend was still alive. He couldn’t give up hope yet.

But what now? Should he keep looking around, always in danger of finding the blue-haired boy among the dead, or should he accept that he would surely never see this other child again and get out of the village before whatever had destroyed it might come back?

“Hey you, kid! You okay?!”

The boy flew around, found himself confronted by a man full of bruises and dried blood, but who seemed otherwise fine. Well, he was alive, that already made him much better off than the majority of villagers around them, that much was sure.  
He hurried over to the boy who he probably believed belonged to the village and had just barely survived this unknown calamity, but as he stopped and took a good look at him, the worry on the man’s face slowly subsided.  
Within just a moment, his expression became one the boy had seen so many times throughout his young life, one that he was sure was the most natural reaction to seeing him. The anger on the villager’s face deepened so much he almost looked like a laguz ready to bare their fangs, he thought. If he could, he would have backed away, anticipating not only verbal but possibly also physical rage, but the dead bodies behind him made it impossible unless he wanted to climb over this reeking pile. He was trapped.

“This was your doing, wasn’t it”, the man growled, “you cursed us and now you’re crawling back here to admire your work, aren’t you. But I won’t let you feed on our misery!”

The boy knew what was probably about to follow, the man clenched his fists and was about to raise them against him. But this man was alive, and he might know of others who had survived. He was the only chance the young child had.  
He swallowed, tried his best to get the knot in his throat to loosen up just a little, opened his mouth he knew was unable to articulate much, but he had to try. He just had to. Just one word, one name he had tried to repeat over and over again by himself the day before.

“I… I...ke…?”   
  


The man froze. There was no way of telling whether he even understood what the boy really wanted from him, but the child had managed to get this name out, allowed himself to be just a little bit proud for a second. How much he wished to show his new friend that he was able to pronounce his name, hoped it would make him happy to hear it  – after all, he had no other way of showing him gratitude.  
A second of silence passed, the man towering over him taking a step back while his expression twisted once again. This time, a smile crept onto his face, but unlike his friend’s smile the other day, it looked… weird.   
Frightening.

“Oh…”, the man began, almost whispered, “I see… you’re the kid I heard Ike talking about yesterday. I get what’s going on… That’s why Greil suddenly… You cursed him, didn’t you? You used Ike to carry your spell into our village and the poor guy unwittingly infected Greil with it! Aren’t you just a clever little demon... “

The boy had no idea what this man was talking about. Being called a devil or demon was nothing new to him, and he had experienced many a time where he had tried to approach a human village only to be accused of having caused whatever predicament had come over the place, but he couldn’t tell what the rest was about. Had he really cursed his new friend without even knowing? Cold sweat broke out all over his body.  
What if all those things people accused him of causing were truly his doing after all? What if he had just never known about it? It would definitely explain why nobody ever wanted to be near him.  
Framed by mountains of death, the man reached for his belt, drew a small knife from somewhere and raised it toward the boy. Maybe, the child briefly found himself thinking, it was better this way. If he had caused his friend’s death, there was no reason why he should be kept alive.   
  


“Daddy!! Come quick, I found mommy! She’s – ”

The man halted his attack to turn and find a young girl rushing for him. She, too, was covered in injuries, her clothes torn and hair all over the place, almost looking like himself, the boy nameless thought.   
Her father’s eyes darted back and forth between his daughter and the boy, until he finally put the knife away, but not without one more glare and the child in front of him.

“Lucky little demon… you better take your chance and get away as fast as you can. If I find you here again, I’ll make you pay what you did to my home and family...”

He spat at the boy, then left together with his daughter, never taking his eyes off him until the two had disappeared behind a building.  
Everything had turned silent once more.

Seemingly without even much of his influence, the boy’s mind began a debate with itself inside of his head, whether he should take his chance and flee, or continue to look for Ike. The thought he might truly be the cause for his death was frightening, but maybe, just maybe, Ike had actually managed to survive. It was the only hope he had.  
Against his better judgement, the boy continued to search the village, always on the lookout for the enraged man, but he never saw him again. He encountered a few other survivors that appeared to care more for their own misery than a young child wandering around, and he was grateful for their blindness. He couldn’t help them anyway, even if he wanted to, what little healing magic he knew about would certainly not do much even if he had a staff at his disposal. In reality, he wasn’t interested in helping them in the first place, it would just waste time he could better use to search for Ike. And certainly, if those people looked at him closer, they would be just as enraged as the man from earlier and chase him away.

When the sun began to set over the destroyed village, the young boy had not found his friend. Instead, he had collected a few things he was certain the dead villagers would not need anymore  –  some food, a few gold coins, a pair of shoes, anything he found useful and could carry.  
But he hadn’t seen Ike. The boy was certain he had looked at every corpse, in every house, around every corner. He was nowhere.  
He wanted to believe this could only mean one thing: Ike was still alive and had fled from the calamity.

Yes, it had to be this, the boy became more certain of it the more he thought about it. He wanted to believe in this, was convinced it was the only way he could go on.  
As he stared at the deep red sky above him, noticing how much it resembled the pools of blood he had seen so many of today, the boy made a decision. No matter where he had to go, no matter how long it took, he would find his friend again. It was the only way for him to go forward from here, to keep on going. No pain or hunger would stop him. He just  _ had _ to see him again, just one more time. And maybe, he thought, maybe by that time he was finally able to tell Ike how thankful he was for his kindness, that his unquestioning help was the reason he was still alive, that his life was quite literally Ike’s.

After taking a big bite out of an apple he had found, the boy set off, no plan of where he should go other than forward.

He could hardly wait for the day he would see Ike again.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this was a rather short one, wasn't it. I started it independently of Tellius Week, to be honest, but when I discovered the event it was too late for me to do new things (at least new fics) and decided that this one could fit one of the week's themes and thus finished it.


End file.
